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The world-famous Bonneville Salt Flats, home to plenty of record attempts. This year the problem with the salt stemmed from too little—rather than too much—rain.

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That's a talented group of students.

Venturi 2016 Shivraj Gohil / Spacesuit Media

The VBB-3 team hard at work on the salt.

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VBB-3's driver, Roger Schroer, walks across the salt.

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Schroer told us that Floating Mountain—one of the only landmarks visible from the car—is his aiming point.

Venturi

Tesla may have made column inches earlier this month with the announcement that the P100D is one of the fastest-accelerating production cars in the world, but when it comes to sheer electrifying speed, the Musk-mobile has nothing on the Venturi Buckeye Bullet-3. You may remember reading about VBB-3 back in February; it's a land-speed-record car built in a collaboration between Monegasque electric vehicle company Venturi and The Ohio State University. Well, the team has been out on the Bonneville Salt Flats the past few days, and on Monday it set a new land speed record for electric vehicles with a two-way average of 341mph (548km/h)!

We spoke to team leader David Cooke last Thursday, when the team was bedding in the car and getting ready for the record attempt. "We're ready to go fast," Cooke told Ars, despite the fact that the condition of the salt was less than ideal. Mechanically, the car was much the same as when we saw it last, following a previous land speed record attempt that had to be shelved due to extreme vibrations caused by poor conditions at Bonneville.

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"From the beginning we have been fighting the complexity of the powertrain and electronics," Cooke said. In particular, getting the battery packs and the inverters all talking to each other properly had consumed a lot of time. "We're very conservative so reliability has been a big focus; we've redone all the wiring from the ground up, implementing some new techniques and concentrating on the wiring connections," he said.

One big change has been the addition of Reinhart Motion Systems as a new partner, supplying a customized version of its motor inverter that can cope with the power and temperatures required.

On September 19, we caught up with the driver, Roger Schroer, who had some good news. "The teams' hard work has paid off," he told us, with an average speed that was "tantalizingly close to 350mph (563km/h). Yesterday was occupied all day with proving out the shifting."

VBB-3 runs a pair of two-speed Hewland gearboxes, both of which have to shift at the same time. "We discovered on Thursday that 10,000 rpm in first gear would go to 275mph (442km/h) at the end of the second mile which was very encouraging; we did that multiple times. The other issue was making sure both front and rear axles will go into second gear. That might seem simple, but it's complicated with timing due to the electrohydraulic clutches. We have to get the timing correct; getting it wrong would potentially destroy expensive gearboxes," Schroer told Ars.

By Monday it seems that the problems were solved. "Today after proving that, they let me shift at 8500rpm into second," Schroer said.

"It's how you live to fight another day. In this kind of vehicle it all boils down to electrical engineers and software. I'm hesitant to say 400mph (643km/h) is on the radar for today but there are multiple things we can do, like raising the shifting point to 10,200 rpm. That would increase speed. The other thing would be to be less conservative on shift delay, which is multiple seconds right now. If both of those issues can be solved we'll go faster for sure. Not sure if that means 400mph but we're taking baby steps to preserve equipment."

Thankfully, Schroer told us that the quality of the salt flat was much improved from the previous week. "I got some definite vehicle instability from bumps (and maybe moisture) that was moving the car sideways at times. But both runs today were good even if the course was somewhat bumpy still. I could with confidence keep my foot down, and there's a direct relationship between stability and keeping it floored. I could place the car where I wanted to," he said.

According to Schroer there's not much of a sensation of speed from the cockpit of VBB-3, thanks to the wide expanse of featureless salt. What's more, the steering is unassisted and quite heavy, and obviously the car has to be set up for stability. "I have to guide the car by looking far ahead, keeping it in a straight line," he explained.

While decent salt conditions certainly helped, much of the credit goes to the team of students from Columbus, Ohio, who built and crew the car. There are 14 of them out in Utah right now—in the middle of the semester, remember—some of whom are taking up to six classes in addition to the 18-hour days back in Ohio necessary to get VBB-3 prepped. I don't know about you, but I'm quite awed by their achievement.

Listing image by Venturi 2016 Shivraj Gohil / Spacesuit Media

Promoted Comments

It's great that college students helped make this record happen and push electric vehicle technology to its limit and beyond. They need some recognition, so I've got a list of those on the Venturi Buckeye Bullet team:

Awesome work by all involved on this. As a random side note though, I absolutely can not stand OSU's insistence on emphasizing the "The" everywhere though. I understand that they are the flagship university of an excellent state university system (and in a state with some exceptional private institutions like Case Western), but no one is going to confuse them with Kent, Wright, BGSU, Akron, OU or any of the others.

fwiw, the record for any wheel-driven car (as opposed to the jets and rockets that happen to have wheels on the ground) is only about 100mph higher. I wonder if electrics will eventually beat that, or if it's pretty much all about the interface between tire and salt at this point.

At what point do you really truly need the aircraft body shape? Top fuel dragsters can reach similar top speeds with an open wheel design so at these speeds it's more efficiency than necessity I suppose. There has to be a point at which resistance and turbulence become insurmountable without better aero.

At what point do you really truly need the aircraft body shape? Top fuel dragsters can reach similar top speeds with an open wheel design so at these speeds it's more efficiency than necessity I suppose. There has to be a point at which resistance and turbulence become insurmountable without better aero.

Yes but a dragster runs for 1/4 mile; air resistance is presumably more of a problem over many miles (I think they run 12 but maybe that's just Bloodhound.

Presumably because at higher RPM, motor torque drops so much that you get more wheel torque with a taller second gear that drops the RPM back into a higher torque part of the rev range.

So why not just start in the second gear in the first place since electric motors start at maximum torque? (I believe that minimum RPM of the motor answers this question but mot sure)

Efficient RPM range is the issue. Electric motors don't have a perfectly flat power curve. People often say they do but that is technically incorrect. It is close enough compared to the very narrow power band of internal combustion engines but the curve isn't perfectly flat just a lot flatter than an ICE.

For normal speed ranges you can get away with a fixed gear with negligible inefficiency. This however isn't normal driving. Anything short of a true race car is fine with a fixed gear. Anything more powerful is going to want to have at least two gears.

Presumably because at higher RPM, motor torque drops so much that you get more wheel torque with a taller second gear that drops the RPM back into a higher torque part of the rev range.

So why not just start in the second gear in the first place since electric motors start at maximum torque? (I believe that minimum RPM of the motor answers this question but mot sure)

The first gear gives you more torque multiplication, increasing wheel torque and ultimately acceleration. The top speed is also so high that a single gear may be compromised too much (in terms of performance) in order to prevent the electric motors from hitting their limit.

At what point do you really truly need the aircraft body shape? Top fuel dragsters can reach similar top speeds with an open wheel design so at these speeds it's more efficiency than necessity I suppose. There has to be a point at which resistance and turbulence become insurmountable without better aero.

Yes but a dragster runs for 1/4 mile; air resistance is presumably more of a problem over many miles (I think they run 12 but maybe that's just Bloodhound.

Presumably because at higher RPM, motor torque drops so much that you get more wheel torque with a taller second gear that drops the RPM back into a higher torque part of the rev range.

So why not just start in the second gear in the first place since electric motors start at maximum torque? (I believe that minimum RPM of the motor answers this question but mot sure)

The first gear gives you more torque multiplication, increasing wheel torque and ultimately acceleration. The top speed is also so high that a single gear may be compromised too much (in terms of performance) in order to prevent the electric motors from hitting their limit.

. . . The motor might be subject to heat build up and cooling limitations that requre the motor to be power limited. The rotor is very heavy, and has a huge amount of kinetic energy at 16,000 rpm trying to pull the soft copper rotor appart. Basicaly, it's trying to fly appart. Consider it's under huge magnetic stresses as it spins. . .

Because electric motors unlike combustion engines are always falling in torque as RPM increases. They usually produce maximum power well below maximum RPM unlike ICEs which produce maximum power fairly close to redline.

As an example:

This is also why the Model S tends to beat similar power + weight cars to 60 but not in the 1/4 mile and they lose every time in races against other ~500 HP cars to 150+ MPH (not sure about the ~700+ HP Model S though).

Because electric motors unlike combustion engines are always falling in torque as RPM increases. They usually produce maximum power well below maximum RPM unlike ICEs which produce maximum power fairly close to redline.

As an example:

This is also why the Model S tends to beat similar power + weight cars to 60 but not in the 1/4 mile and they lose every time in races against other ~500 HP cars to 150+ MPH (not sure about the ~700+ HP Model S though).

That chart is more a function of the batteries and VFDs than the motor itself.

Because electric motors unlike combustion engines are always falling in torque as RPM increases. They usually produce maximum power well below maximum RPM unlike ICEs which produce maximum power fairly close to redline.

As an example:

This is also why the Model S tends to beat similar power + weight cars to 60 but not in the 1/4 mile and they lose every time in races against other ~500 HP cars to 150+ MPH (not sure about the ~700+ HP Model S though).

That chart is more a function of the batteries and VFDs than the motor itself.

Unrelated question, do these vehicle speed records require a driver?

I'd say yes:

Quote:

"I have to guide the car by looking far ahead, keeping it in a straight line," he explained.

"I have to guide the car by looking far ahead, keeping it in a straight line," he explained.

I don't think you (THavoc) answered the question that wagnerrp was intending to ask, namely: do vehicle land speed records demand that there be a driver aboard the vehicle? Implication: could a drone land vehicle set a land speed record?

For the feminists, the fastest a woman has driven on land is Kitty O'Neil at over 512 MPH (In a jet-powered car).

The current land speed record holder is Andy Green at a shade over 760 MPH (that's Mach 1.02).

347 MPH is pretty damned fast for ANY car. But they're going to hit the same practical limits in physics with respect to delivering thrust to the wheels and not melting down something. For a car (wheel driven), their goal is to beat 439 MPH.

It'd be cool if they did, but I'm not sure the technology will allow it since it's easier to contain a burning fuel than burning batteries.

At what point do you really truly need the aircraft body shape? Top fuel dragsters can reach similar top speeds with an open wheel design so at these speeds it's more efficiency than necessity I suppose. There has to be a point at which resistance and turbulence become insurmountable without better aero.

Top fuel dragsters have a lot more horsepower, in addition to the other comments about the duration of their run. (Well under 4 seconds for a 1000 foot run - No longer 1/4 mile.). There are no dynos currently capable of measuring the power produced by one but through various sensors and calculations it is estimated that they make somewhere between 8,500 and 10,000hp. Also, they require significant downforce to keep them stable, something an LSR car doesn't.

At what point do you really truly need the aircraft body shape? Top fuel dragsters can reach similar top speeds with an open wheel design so at these speeds it's more efficiency than necessity I suppose. There has to be a point at which resistance and turbulence become insurmountable without better aero.

Yes but a dragster runs for 1/4 mile; air resistance is presumably more of a problem over many miles (I think they run 12 but maybe that's just Bloodhound.

fwiw, the record for any wheel-driven car (as opposed to the jets and rockets that happen to have wheels on the ground) is only about 100mph higher. I wonder if electrics will eventually beat that, or if it's pretty much all about the interface between tire and salt at this point.

The Bloodhound SSC (a jet-powered streamliner) used solid aluminum wheels because no other materials could handle the incredible forces involved. At 1000 Mph, the wheels spin at over 10,000 RPM!

Even at 1/3rd of that speed, the wheels would be spinning at or about 2000-4000 RPM, and a car that is using them for motive forces is also imparting significant torque on them, and at those speeds, just the friction from the constant slippage must be generating quite a bit of heat.

It's great that college students helped make this record happen and push electric vehicle technology to its limit and beyond. They need some recognition, so I've got a list of those on the Venturi Buckeye Bullet team:

Awesome work by all involved on this. As a random side note though, I absolutely can not stand OSU's insistence on emphasizing the "The" everywhere though. I understand that they are the flagship university of an excellent state university system (and in a state with some exceptional private institutions like Case Western), but no one is going to confuse them with Kent, Wright, BGSU, Akron, OU or any of the others.

Emphasis on "The" everywhere was an effort by the University to differentiate its brand identity from that of the other OSUs, namely Oregon State University and Oklahoma State University.

"I have to guide the car by looking far ahead, keeping it in a straight line," he explained.

I don't think you (THavoc) answered the question that wagnerrp was intending to ask, namely: do vehicle land speed records demand that there be a driver aboard the vehicle? Implication: could a drone land vehicle set a land speed record?

Oh, I understood correctly.

The implication from the quote was the driver needs to make small adjustments to stay on target.

I don't think at those speeds, a drone would work due to the lag time between the car and the remote operator.